We need to be grown ups and we need real Leadership.

We’re bombarded by news from all sides all the time. When I was a kid news was non-alarmist. It was actually neutral. You could turn on the news and the reporters would make their report without drawing many, or any, conclusions. They generally didn’t takes sides, didn’t use sarcasm or other ploys to undercut one side of an issue or the other, and just reported facts as they understood them. There were weather segments, sports segments, human interest stories, reports on political things, like bills going through the house or senate, reports on campaigns and such, but it was all handled in a pretty grown-up way, neutral. If a big-ass storm was coming they said so, looked at projections and passed along whatever warnings or advisories were coming through official sources. Somewhere along the line ratings became the all important thing, I suspect capitalism is behind it, rich men bought news stations and wanted to get more and more money, maybe there were shareholders who wanted the same thing.

So now we come to today and the news cycle is 24/7 and everyone from everywhere is desperate for ratings and we have the insanity of alarmist headlines, misleading BS being shoveled day and night. We stress out about threats both real and imagined. Everyone is so overwhelmed and confused that they don’t know what to believe. We’ve all heard weird conflicting stories that something like Kale, or milk, or toothpaste, causes cancer and then we’ll hear down the road that it actually prevents cancer, or that yoga will both cause and prevent migraines. Then we get walloped with a global pandemic. Actual medical experts are telling us to stay away from each other because symptomless people can spread this, and this virus is a BEAST. Covid-19 is an insidious, treacherous, murderous, monster of a virus. Some people have it and don’t get sick, that is, they don’t develop a fever, cough, shortness of breath, and don’t wind up on a ventilator fighting for their lives. Or they have a super mild case, hardly felt a thing. But, well, a few things:

This thing is Contagious. Really quite contagious, and there are people who get it, suffer almost unimaginably, suffer it all essentially alone, and DIE.
Some of the people who don’t get sick initially are suffering a massively aggressive clotting condition that is causing murderous strokes in people way younger than usually get them, needing amputations because of these clots.
Some of those symptomless people, as well as people who manage to survive through a near fatal bout of it, go on to suffer organ failure, heart attacks, and so on.
Some of the people dying of this are children. Seemingly healthy children who might have some symptoms, but not alarming ones, who develop a terrifying syndrome involving inflammation of or around their vital organs. Some of these kids are dying.

When we are being asked to stay home, it isn’t about our “freedom” it isn’t about that at all, it’s about public health and safety. If you are a parent, caretaker of children, other people, pets, or even plants, please imagine there is a viable threat to that being or beings that you care about. Let’s imagine this theoretical threat is something outside and that the best and safest thing to do is to stay inside the house until the threat is over. There is some toxin in the air, do you leave your kids out playing in the yard? Do you leave your dog outside in their run? It’s a plant devouring insect swarm, do you leave plants in pots out on the unenclosed porch? No, because you are not a monster. So you bring the kids inside despite the fact that they want to stay outside. Are you “restricting their freedom?” Technically, by definition, but what a wrong-headed way to frame the situation. You are saving their lives. You are “restricting their freedom” as much as a lifeguard restricts someone’s freedom to drown while being dragged out to sea by the undertow.

We really all need to look at this whole situation like grown ups. We are adults, hopefully compassionate, empathetic adults, so that we can see that even if we might not feel under direct threat from this virus, even if we imagine our immune system would kick Covid-19’s scrawny ass, we understand that there are a lot of people who aren’t that lucky. There are people with conditions that suppress their immune systems, are obese, elderly, have lung issues, or are otherwise vulnerable to this thing cannot afford to get this. We need to protect them by curtailing our behavior. I know there are people, loads and loads of people who have lost their jobs because of this shut down. They are in trouble now, they are suffering and it is very, very real, but the answer is not reopening the country. Because we are here right now, with the infection rate still climbing, we cannot go out and mingle, that will just cause another massive spike and another shutdown of everything. Not to mention all the suffering and dying it will bring to many of those who get infected. We need a massive, measured, thoughtful response from our government. We need proper, comprehensive support for all who have lost jobs, we need proper support and protection for medical professionals, PPE, we need housing protection for all who can’t pay mortgages and rent, we need food distribution so people are not going hungry, and on and on. To those who immediately want to say: “How will we pay for it? Seriously? HOW? Do you know how much money that is????” I want you to think about the word “Emergency.”

When there is an emergency, you do what you have to do to get through it, and you worry about how much it costs after the emergency has passed. Think about a bad accident. Someone is badly injured, losing blood, you go to the ER and worry about how that gets paid for later. The most important thing is to preserve life, stop the bleeding, repair the damage. You deal with the cost later because it is an Emergency. A less immediate example, my husband and I saw this pandemic coming. That is, we started hearing about this weird virus in Wuhan in January and we thought of the H1N1 flu, SARS, etc. As we started to hear it was spreading we thought, huh, I wonder if China will be able to contain this? What if it starts spreading to other countries? As we started to hear it was “all under control” but saw China quarantining cities, provinces etc, quick-building 1,000 bed hospitals, sending folks in HASMAT gear to disinfect the streets… we started to think this virus was definitely going to spread, that is was quite dangerous, and that my husband is pretty vulnerable to it. In case this became an emergency I more than doubled my grocery budget. This is not something we could afford. It ate away at our savings quite quickly and that made me feel uneasy, of course, but I told myself if we ended up sticking things out at home I’d be glad I’d done it. If the virus hadn’t come here then we could always just eat the food, use the daily supplies, and cut our food budget in the future as we did so. Our government should be bending over backwards to protect the lives of its citizens. Our lives should be the first priority and money should be something we worry about later. Yep, the bill will come due and we will have to deal with it, but the alternative is utterly unthinkable.

Accomplished

For those of us who haven’t gotten sick, or been consumed with caring for someone who did, who aren’t frontline healthcare workers pressed into crazy, heroic efforts and exhaustion in service to their fellow humans, and who have managed to stay home without undue suffering… have had a chance to do things we might normally not have the time for. I know I have at least. As strange and scary as it has all been, and as much as I care about the suffering of others, I have had time for things I’ve previously neglected.

I’m reading again, for real, finishing novels, reading modules for an upcoming game, etc.
I’m writing again, keeping a bit of a journal, blogging more regularly, etc.
Got the shed set up for art and, basically, glamping.
Gaming. I think I am currently in 3 RPGs and getting ready to run a 4th.
Baking, I bake again. More scones, cookies, and brownies have been made during the pandemic than in the previous year, probably, I don’t track this stuff.
Professional development. I am learning so much in online classes and webinars that will make me better at my job it’s crazy.
Set the deck up for BBQs, lunches in the fresh air, and hammock lying.

The first month of self-isolation was not very productive at all. I think the worry, stress and fear made focus impossible for me. My husband was ill and getting 3 breathing treatments a day, I had had the flu, our son was recovering from 4 impacted wisdom teeth and the surgery to remove them, the younger 2 kids were struggling to learn from home, my eldest had quit her job to protect my husband from exposure, (assuming he didn’t have the damn thing which was never confirmed because why test someone who is obviously ill and stuff?) and we were all just stressed to the max. Yeah, that month, possibly more, was pure survival mode, though we all felt the relief introverts feel when they get to turtle-up at home, and kept insisting we were fine, we had no focus and a lot of worries.

Things are mostly better these days, we have new stresses, like our bosses talking about returning to work while the number of covid-19 cases continues to climb throughout the country. I can’t tell you how reluctant I am to return to work. A friend who works at a national insurance company told us they are not being asked to consider coming back to the office until after Labor Day and that is not carved in stone. I hate how there is no real safety net and no real help so that everyone is desperate to get back to work. We all deserve better.

Sunday, Relaxing,& Thinking

The hippie fort soothes me. It turns off the jagged, jangling, screaming of my overwhelm and lets me rest. Out there, 30 yards from the house, there is no TV, the internet is slow and unreliable, and time slows down. I colored for a bit while my husband took a turn reading the book we’re reading aloud to each other: The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet; by Becky Chambers. It is a great, fun read so far. It’s got a little of the flavor of Firefly plus… something else, with aliens and such, and the characters are wonderful so far. We are enjoying it so much we might make it a family read-aloud in the near future. ^_^

I finished The Year of Less; by Cait Flanders. Terrific book, just what I needed to motivate me. I’ll be getting started on Step One soon; Declutter your House. It sure needs it! So much stuff. Why? So much. The not spending much has happened on it’s own due to the global pandemic but it’s still something I’m going to have to track as the world struggles to go back to some kind of normal. I don’t want to slip into old, unconscious habits that were dragging us down. Hmmm, I guess I’m going to need some boxes and some bags, I have a lot of stuff to go through.

Random items of progress and frustration

It’s been a big day so far. We had to take trash and recycling to the transfer station and buy more bags from them. Our town sells town branded trash bags for $2 a piece instead of a flat fee for the year. I like it because it motivates me to produce less trash. Then, because the tree by the driveway has been going just crazy and the car has barely moved, we took the car to no-human-interaction car wash to clean it off, then realized we needed gas too so we took care of that too. That is as big an outing as we’ve had in a month. Crazy. While we were out about 90% of the people we saw out walking and doing things (seen from the relative safety of our sealed car) did not have masks on.

I’ve continued to work on my shed, using things we already own, junk I chucked in the basement and things like that. I’ve got more lights out there now, and I brought out loads of art supplies and a string of purple lights. I found a bunch of teas in metal tins at the back of the tea cupboard and brought them out there, it’s nice to have a variety and these teas haven’t been seeing any use. They are also distinct from the teas I use in the house so it creates more of a feeling of getting away. Most of them are blends I created myself too, makes me feel good to consume things I had a hand in creating, or to use things I created, I love that feeling.

This far into the day and I have no idea what dinner will be. Bad mommy. LOL. At this point I am so burned out on cooking it is just crazy. I don’t know what to make! I am so sick of having to decide, having to come up with stuff, it’s so relentless. I mean, not ALL the time. Some times, especially right after we get a delivery of groceries, I feel inspired and excited to cook again, for a night or 2, sometimes for a breakfast and lunch or 2. I look at what we have and I want to make stuff again. A few days later and here I am… uninspired, cranky, and ready for anyone else in the world to do the cooking. I forget to thaw things on time, I forget to order key ingredients or they just aren’t available… what is that? My whole life has been lived with the potential to just go and get anything, maybe I couldn’t afford to do that, but the foods were all there. I wanted a couple of cans of lentils the other week and the store was out of them, lentils. Nothing in my life prepared me for how utterly weird that is. That’s the kind of story my parents used to tell us kids about Russia. Like supposedly Russian people would wait in a line forever and ever and just get whatever the hell they were selling or giving out or something, because communism. (hold on, I need to add lentils to my order again, see if I can get any)

In 24 hours, or thereabouts, I have cut back on web surfing, TV and so forth. Proving nothing, anybody can do anything for a day. We’ll see how I get on. I think our savings are about to dip again, we had to have the septic system cleaned out, omg so expensive, and we need to pay all our bills again. One of our bills actually went up $10/month for no reason, the jerks just want to charge us more so we’re stuck with it. WTF? I thought we weren’t supposed to have monopolies in this country. To keep not spending money, as I want to do, I need to plan some kind of dinner tonight. Ummmmmmmmm…. I suppose that’s a question better answered or pondered in front of the open pantry.

More & Less

I want to change my life. This isn’t about being fed up with staying home, disinfecting my groceries, never seeing people in person unless I live with them, etc. Hopefully things will get better in those ways if we can all just not make things worse for a while and amazing scientists can create a super good vaccine. I mean I want to change my day to day life, the way I live, the way I spend my time. I also would love to save money, because we have dreams, we want to travel and see the world someday… when people can do that sort of thing again.

See, I don’t think it’s possible to calculate how much time I’ve wasted watching T.V., playing solo video games, screwing around on the computer, and so forth. It’s an unknown quantity, but it’s BIG. Binge watching is my default. If one show is good 8 in a row is better. I’m not saying these activities are utterly without value, not at all, just… when they become too big for their britches, well, what do you end up with? What are you left with in the end? Nothing. And it’s worse than that because, if these activities take over, you’ve LOST something that can never be replaced: Time. Our lives are made of time but we can never make any more of it. I heard this somewhere recently but it’s escaping me now: “We can’t make time, we can only take time.” It is the most finite of resources and we sell it away so we can eat and be warm and safe and, crazily, we “kill” it, whiling away hours on top of hours in mindless or useless pursuits. And then we wonder, sadly, regretfully, why we don’t have time for important things.

Question 1 for myself: What do I want more of in my life?

Experiences
music
baking & cooking
time with my hubby to relax, unwind, and connect
time with the kids w/ real interaction and meaning
sharing of life skills with the kids
reading
art
writing
a neat, restful, peaceful home
better health
time in nature
laughter
time with friends
Connection/Community
fun!
Enthusiasm!
LIFE!!!!

Question 2 for myself: What do I need to cut out to get more of what I want in life?

T.V. (or excessive TV, since a little bit is ok?)
Mindlessly surfing the web, playing online games etc.
video games, maybe can keep a litte? but seriously, fun as they are: what do I have when I’m done?
Less time in my room alone. (Basically accomplished by dropping 1-3)
We can and should drop at least 2 of the 4 streaming services we currently have. (how did this even happen? I mean, all together they cost less than cable would but STILL.)
Clutter/excess stuff
junk food
Take out food/eating out mindlessly.
most alcohol (ie “it’s Tuesday” is not a real reason to open a bottle of wine)
Shopping.

Shopping. Shopping is huge. It’s an activity that is just begging to be abused especially in our consumer culture. I have used shopping as a social activity when I didn’t actually need to buy anything, as a pick-me-up when I ‘m blue, (OOO, look, Bargains!) as a sport, (again, bargains, I am Awesome at it!) as a way to kill time while waiting for someone, something, some event, etc., because I deserve __________, a treat, etc. and from a feeling like I might be missing out if I don’t go. I need to appreciate all that we have and stop adding to what is already too much.

Our worst budget-offense seems to have been take out meals. I don’t know how it got that way aside from me getting burnt out because I am the only one who really knows how to cook and I get wildly sick of doing it sometimes. That and migraines, poor sleep, stress, and how damn easy it was in the days before the sickness came to just order food and go and get it. We justified it way more often than we should have. Between that and my shopping “for bargains” because I know that was more money than I would probably be willing to accept, we must have been spending a ton. Somehow, our savings is actually trending in an upwards direction despite not having the rental income from our little apartment. We are both working from home but our income has dropped by a significant amount with the apartment empty, yet somehow, because we have barely had any take out and I haven’t been shopping as a sport, our savings has grown. And that with an increase in grocery spending.

Note: These revelations are brought to you by; The Year of Less; by Cait Flanders, and time spent in my 30 yards from the house getaway spot: The Airy-Fairy Peace, Love and Granola Hippie Fort & Art Studio. I’ve seen some harsh reviews of Cait’s book and I seriously just don’t get it. My guess is that people bought it wanting/expecting a how-to spend less kind of book, but it is clearly a memoir. The author is super clear that the book is basically all the stuff she went through while on her spend less journey that she didn’t include in her blog. So, it isn’t some step-by-step how-to book, though she does include her shopping ban rules, revised rules and some tips to get people started on their own journeys. What I find in her book is inspiration. Her life is/was very different from mine. She was single, in her 20s, and had a drinking problem and a spending problem that were both dragging her down. She was starting and developing a career and just in a very different place from me. I am a grown woman, well into adulthood, I am married with 3 adult and near adult kids, a house, etc. We don’t have the kind of debt she did. Getting drunk and forgetting things isn’t a thing. (my memory issues are more age or stress than anything else) But this young woman’s memoirs have much of value for me. She figured out some really important things well before I did and I’m so happy she decided to share her story.

So, thanks Cait! I am definitely going to keep working at this.

Thursday Thoughts

My son’s birthday is coming up. He’ll be turning 18 in quarantine. I’m doing what I can, got him a few presents and they arrived and are hidden. They aren’t much but they are what I can do under the circumstances. A few books, a sweatshirt, and I got him a special quarantine birthday banner and cake topper which should get here in time. Kind of an insane indulgence really, but he’s turning 18, I want to decorate and make it as special as possible. I’ll be making a cake and hoping to be able to get some ice cream too. He wants a certain kind of pizza and getting that will just depend on whether they do curbside pick up or not. We will be playing an RPG that day as per my son’s request. I will do whatever I can to make sure the snacks are epic. I really want to try to get the lad some Virgil’s Root Beer, it’s his favorite. We’ll see if I can manage it.

We’re having warm days and cool nights lately and we’re keeping a lot of windows open. That means the cats are now obsessed with bird watching. All winter they ignored the birds, pretty much, but the birds are more active now and the cats can hear them better and smell them. So now they are glued to the windows chattering at the birds. The dog is even more vigilant about defending our borders now too. She doesn’t like people walking down the sidewalk across the street, or being out in their yards, or other dogs existing. She pretty much hates all living things, really, so she barks out the window now whenever she sees dogs or people. At least she’s started ignoring the rabbits and squirrels for the most part.

Work is starting to ramp up for me as we scramble to try and pull together some kind of activities for summer reading. I’m doing ok, it’s just weird trying to plan to do a bunch of stuff with no in person programming. I’m trying to set up virtual book clubs, take home craft activities, and put together materials for those who want to take part in the fairy tale and ghost story writing contest I’m hoping will actually happen. I’m supposed to come up with prizes somehow too. EEEEEEEK. That’s definitely a tricky bit. I think I need to go hide in a video game for a bit.

Mother Issues (etc.)

74 days of isolation and all is well at our house… or at least relatively so. We are all covid free as far as we know, all still at home, still able to get food and water. We are very lucky.

We’re still gaming a lot. Preparing to add more games and more players to the mix going forward. Lots of fun to be had there. We’re preparing to face decisions about going back to physical workspaces relatively soon as the state opens up. My Director just mentioned having the library actually open in some fashion by mid June. Color me terrified/skeptical. If we open and the spike in cases comes later I am naturally extremely reluctant to be exposed to this monstrous disease or have my vulnerable family members exposed, at the same time I doubt/hope it won’t happen that we won’t open then because the spike comes in time for us to change course on that. If I just babbled some kind of incoherent nonsense, I apologize, my focus has been suffering lately.

Last night, as I was gaming with some distant friends, my sister started texting me about how our mother has been ripping her down about her adorable little craft business. WTF? I have so many objections to this treatment of my sister. #1. Who does that? Who wants to just rip someone down over their art that they enjoy? It is so the worst sort of Jr. High viciousness #2. Who does that to their own daughter??? #3. WHY??????? WTF???? Ok, I have a pretty good idea wtf: jealousy. Our mother started behaving in a competitive manner toward us as soon as each of us approached puberty. When we started looking like attractive young ladies she clearly freaked out internally and started treating us like crap. (In new and exciting ways she hadn’t tried before!) If we, as teenagers, dressed attractively, wore any makeup, talked to or about boys, etc etc. she would call us “whores” and other choice words, accuse us of sleeping around, restrict the hell out of us, etc. I remember her flirting with boys we brought around, putting us down as we were just not as good as her, as popular as her etc. It was ridiculous. So, my sister is better educated than our mother, has more money and success and that sort of thing, which is not my sister’s focus but is probably why our mother is digging at her.

See, the thing is, my mother and her husband run a successful online business that has supported them for more than several years. They ship worldwide, they have a showroom that people occasionally come and peruse, (not often, it isn’t really public) but they sell tons online, more so now in the pandemic because those who can still afford to shop are doing it online. So my sister, who has a great job already at like a company, started making these terrific crafts and a local place or two near her started selling some, and she made so many she started selling them online. She did it more or less on a lark, maybe as a little experiment. She loves making these things, they are lovely, so she put them out there. Knowing she can afford to do this experiment who wouldn’t be encouraging of her hobby/business? That’s right! Our mother. My sister can’t say anything about her little fledgling business without our mother shitting all over it and bragging about how much money her business makes…. and our mother asks and asks about it so she can get her digs in! If my sister responds with any kind of ‘hey, wtf, don’t pick on me’ all of a sudden mother dearest cannot understand WHY Sis is so upset or angry? “why are you mad at me?” So Sis needed to vent, needed a little TLC from someone else who regularly receives such bullshit abuse and understands the horrible bind one is in when being tortured by a narcissist.

Sis? 100%: I feel ya! We got through our childhood alive. We somehow all grew up and eventually chose good, loving husbands. We managed to raise kids who are all wonderful in their unique ways and we LOVE OUR KIDS and SUPPORT them. We are fucking superheroes! We have grown kids, almost grown kids, and a few younger kids, and all of them are good, kind people who still love us. With any luck they will bitch in their like spaceship voice logs or whatever about how we moms all bother them with space-care packages too much, or how we sometimes interfere with grandkid’s homework because we want to talk to them every day. But they will never, Never have to rant to each other or cousin to cousin about how we tear them down, insult them, manipulate them, or make them feel like shit. Our kids won’t have that to deal with because we are goddamn amazing phoenixes rising from the ashes and ruin we were subjected to, and we have all fought hard to be good moms and we have succeeded. I don’t know, maybe our mother is jealous of that? Jealous of the happiness we have each found in so many ways so she wants to damage it, drag us down, make us as miserable as she is? Whatever her damn issues are, they are not ours, and I’ve got your back. Bitch to me whenever you need to. I get it, girl, I hear you.

Isolation: Day 71

I think I need to have a talk with my phone about covid-19. We’ve been self-isolating since early March and my phone keeps relentlessly informing me that I am less active than I was last year. Is there like a setting? Or something? Like a quarantine setting so the phone knows that unless someone buys me a treadmill or whatever I am just not going to get in all those juicy, juicy steps? Or can we maybe kind of just get the phone to read the headlines and stuff?

Mostly yes I am just not walking around as much as I did in the pre-pandemic world but part of it is also that I am home 100% of the time and don’t feel compelled to keep my phone on me at all times. My phone isn’t recording so most of my running up and down the stairs, with laundry and such. Maybe it would be less concerned about me if I just started keeping it in my pocket all the time? Is it me? Am I the problem here? It’s phone neglect isn’t it?

So tomorrow a bunch of businesses are going to open back up apparently. I won’t be going to any of them because OMG it is so not safe to be trying to get back to any kind of normal yet. I’m seeing cases spiking about 3-ish weeks after all these other places start easing restrictions, Texas has something like 1,000 new cases a day now? We’ll probably see that uptick in Georgia any day now too. South Korea and Germany are having issues, China’s having issues, returning to normal seems like FUBAR situation where it’s being implemented.

Traffic’s already picked up around here. I see loads of people out walking, biking, etc. without masks. The people running the transfer station keep their masks off and some people seem to take it as some kind of slight that we refuse to approach them. I know my mom thinks I’m crazy because I won’t visit with her but she has been anything but what I would consider careful during this whole thing. I’m not visiting with anyone except the people I live with. This is disease and you’re not just taking the risk of seeing that one person, it’s that person and anyone they may have come in contact with, and anyone those people had contact with, and so on, and on, and on. This virus is dangerous and weirdly unpredictable. It has so many effects that seem to be a part of it or that are associated with it in some poorly understood way. The clotting this is scary. The multiple organ failures-thing is scary, and these things can happen after folks seem to have recovered. Screw that noise. I’m feeling pretty good about staying home as long as I am able to.

Day 70: Date Night was Great!

It took me most of the day to clean the shed/studio/hippie-fort, set up the loft, get the food ready and all, but it was worth it. He dressed up, tie and everything, and came and knocked on the shed door. I let him in, Billie Holiday setting a mood, we danced, had wine with a simple dinner of pasta, salad and bread. There were homemade cookies for dessert, we played Bananagrams for the first time, not sure we did it right, we climbed up in the loft and read to each other from the book A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet; and had a wonderful evening.

It was warm when we fell asleep but super chilly when we woke up. I made tea and we had breakfast of grapes, bread and cheese I’d hidden in the little fridge. We stayed out there talking and reading to each other for a while, until we heard our son out walking the dog, then we put everything away, cleaned up all the food and dishes and such, and went back to the house to take care of chores and get on with our day. One of the best dates I’ve ever been on. My husband thought it was awesome too. So date night under quarantine accomplished. ^_^

Day 69: Date Night Apocalypse Edition! (etc)

Still in quarantine. Still working and schooling from home. Our state is kinda-sorta starting to open up starting on Monday, I mean, not really, they are being very cautious, thank the gods. But supposedly more businesses get to open, at least if they have no contact with the public? Or something? I do not believe this will affect my job. I think I will still be working from home and so will my husband so it won’t have much impact here. The kids are certainly not headed back to school.

Whether or not the library opens in some strange, restricted fashion, I know all summer programming will be virtual. I’m supposed to have a list of activities, crafts, etc ready by next friday for my boss, I need to sort out prizes/rewards, I need to get a lot done actually, somehow, really quickly. I’m supposed to make all these decisions, I’m supposed to come up with prizes when I can’t go shopping and can’t count on delivery dates and such. Makes me nervous. I hate making promises it turns out I can’t keep through no fault of my own.

I’m planning a game for some friends. It should be fun. We’ll have to play over Roll20 and chat over Zoom but so far gaming that way is going pretty well for us. I’m hopeful I can manage to run this one and make it special. Roll20 actually has some real advantages over face to face gaming, we may never go back. ^_^ I love the nice, full color, detailed maps I don’t have to draw. So cool. I can’t wait to get started but it might take a bit, I’m still reading the modules and learning the rules, not to mention learning to use Roll20. So much to do.

And…. Date Night! Of course we can’t go see a movie, or go out to dinner or stop by a bookstore and wander the aisles in bliss, but we were thinking of taking a long walk together and, I don’t know, making out in one of our cars with the radio on? We’ve been pretty desperate for a night away for… years actually. We tried to plan a weekend getaway a year and a half ago and instead cancelled the whole thing because our son was having an emotional crisis. With 3 kids who struggle with depression and anxiety an emotional crisis is never comfortably far off. So we haven’t been anywhere alone together in ages. Since the lockdown our son has taken to coming into our room to talk about 9:00 in the evening, he brings the dog, sits and chats for a bit, and then asks if we can watch something. We can’t really say no, so we don’t, he stays until one or both of us are nodding off and then usually gives a little laugh, says good night and goes off to bed. Between the constant threat of kids coming round our room to chat or in need of hugs or something, and the dampening effect the pandemic has had on romance, let’s just say things have becoming a little too G-rated around here for either of us. So, Date Night, walking, smooching in the car, maybe sneaking out to get a drive through ice cream or something. But the walk has been cancelled due to a severe thunderstorm warning that makes even a drive seem like a bit of a stupid idea. *sigh*

Never fear! For Resourceful Girl is here! Having seen the weather forecast yesterday I realized our plans were going to be altered. I also thought “Why should this be on my stressed out, over worked husband to plan? I’m better at this stuff anyway. ~_^ He’s actually really good at it) Anyway, I took it upon myself to carefully sneak mad amounts of stuff down to the shed I so desperately want to be an awesome hideout and I cleaned, pulled things together, hung lots of gauzy curtains up and that, and made a little love nest, if you can believe it. There’s a chance it’ll be a bit spidery but whatever, we need to get away and 30 yards from the house will have to do!

For romance-type-things and ambience and such I have a candle chandelier, my old CD player and some Billie Holiday ready to go, gauzy curtains hiding most of the scroungy boards in the loft, fairy lights, wine, bread, cheese, acres of soft pillows and a few other things. I’ve got a tiny fridge down there so the wine is cold and the cheese and grapes are there along with some salads I put together, bread, water, the fixings for making tea after dinner. I brought down some simple games like D Dominoes and Uno, I even snuck our PJs down there. I’m planning on dinner, dancing, maybe some games, maybe reading aloud to each other like we used to do all the time, and hopefully some romance. ^_^

Gosh, I hope he likes it!